Kingdom of Shadows (89 page)

He smiled gently. ‘We’re not in Scotland, Clare. Berwick is English for the moment, remember?’

She sobered abruptly. ‘Yes. I remember. How could I forget? I don’t feel much like a party, do you?’

He glanced back at her and shook his head. ‘Not tonight. No.’

The room was small and white-painted, with a wardrobe, a narrow double bed and a large, much mirrored dressing table next to the window. Squeezed amongst the rest of the furniture were two armchairs. Through a door in the corner they could see a bathroom with a heap of snowy towels. Near them on a low cupboard stood a kettle and a tray with cups and saucers and little sachets of tea, coffee, sugar and powdered milk. There were two wrapped wafer biscuits, two apples and two oranges in a bowl.

Neil smiled at her. ‘A feast seems to be included! Will this do?’

Clare was standing looking round. ‘It’s fine.’ She walked over to the window and threw it up, letting in a blast of cold damp air. They could see over the rooftops towards the river. Neil came and stood behind her. He frowned. They could just see the outline of the Constable Tower behind the leafless trees. He put his arms around Clare. ‘Do you want to change? I’ll take you out to dinner first if you like?’ Her body was tense, unresponsive, as she shook her head. ‘I want to do it now. Straight away.’

Neil frowned, uncomfortable now that it had come to the moment. ‘Doesn’t it have to be dark or something?’

She laughed bitterly. ‘It has to be neither dark, nor anything else.’

‘And you’re sure you can do it with me here?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’ve brought the candle …’ Her voice tailed away. ‘I do need you here, Neil. You won’t leave me?’

‘Of course I won’t leave you.’ He took her hand. ‘You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, Clare.’

‘But I do, don’t you see? She’s going to torment me for the rest of my life if I don’t stop her – appease her – send her away – whatever I have to do to get rid of her.’ Her voice rose desperately. She moved away from him abruptly and sat down on the end of the bed. She felt strange, remote, still unaware of him as a man. All the sexual charge which had been between them had gone. Her body was cold, centred within itself, closed once more to every emotion but the emotions of that other woman from the past.

Silently she pulled her case on to the bed and opened it. From the bottom she extricated one of the silver candles, wrapped in tissue. She took out the small candleholder and set the candle in it and put it on the bedside table, then she glanced at him for the first time. ‘Have you got any matches?’ Her face was white and strained. Isobel had refused to come to her when Zak was there in Edinburgh. Perhaps she sensed that Clare was going to try and finish it. Perhaps she would refuse the summons again this time. She half hoped she would.

Neil shook his head grimly, then he raised his hand and touched her arm. ‘I saw some in the bathroom.’ A packet emblazoned with the hotel’s name and crest lay in a small straw basket with soaps and shampoos and tissues.

He lit the candle for her and realised that his hands were shaking. Silently he backed away and sat down on one of the chairs in the corner as Clare picked up the candle and set it on the floor. The flame flickered in the draught from the open window and she turned and stared out for a moment. Darkness was almost on them now. Opaque, windswept, the river had gone, as had the shadows of the castle. There were no stars. Rain spattered in on the cold wind and with it the dank salt stench of the North Sea.

The room was growing dark.

Isobel did not have to be summoned. She was there. Waiting. Staring into the past and into the future.

She had been put in an underground cell beneath the castle. No one spoke to her. No one told her what was happening. Twice a day they brought her food. The place was completely dark. They did not give her a candle. There were no blankets, only a bed of musty damp heather which rustled slightly in the darkness. By the dim light which flooded in when the door opened she had time to see the dungeon – low-ceilinged and foul – then all was darkness again. They gave her a bucket to relieve herself and a jug of water to drink, that was all. She had to find both by groping in the darkness.

When the sentencing was over there had been total silence in the chapter house at Lanercost. Then Marjorie had begun to sob. At last, Mary, still stunned by the King’s pronouncements, had put out her arms and hugged the child to her. The crying stopped.

Edward had folded his fur mantle more closely around his thin body. ‘Take them away,’ he said. His eyes had strayed to Isobel’s white face for a moment, then he smiled. He had turned to the Earl of Buchan and he slapped him on the shoulder.

There had been no time for goodbyes, no chance to speak at all. The women were separated at once and Isobel found herself locked in one of the monks’ cells, alone. She was too stunned by the sentence to react.

For a long time she had stood at the narrow window staring out at the bleak Cumberland moors. The heather had turned brown; it was matted and flattened by the rain. Eventually she turned away and climbed into the narrow wooden bed. Wrapping herself in the thin woollen blanket, she turned her face to the wall.

For the journey to Berwick they put chains on her wrists. ‘Mustn’t let our little bird fly away, must we?’ The man hammering them closed didn’t trouble to be too accurate with his blows. She gasped with pain as the hammer slipped and she saw her wrist thicken and begin to colour. They put her in a closed litter – Edward had forbidden her to ride, instinctively knowing that riding was a pleasure, a freedom, and therefore denying it.

Then the nightmare had begun.

At first when they came for her it was an enormous relief. It was a brilliant sunny day and the glare and brightness dazzled her after the darkness. The air was sharp and fresh. They made her climb to the top of one of the towers in the walls, stooping beneath the low doorway to step out on to the warm, leaded roof. There, from the ramparts overlooking the town and the bend of the river they had hung her cage, a small wooden structure, latticed with iron, with open, barred sides so that she could be seen from every angle as the King had decreed. Only the back was closed – hanging as it was against the wall of the castle – and there there was a small enclosed cubicle, built into the ramparts, a privy for her, by order of the king. The governor of the castle was waiting for her. He swung open the door between two battlements of stone and beckoned her over. ‘Your lodgings are ready, lady.’ He gave an exaggerated bow.

Isobel stared at the cage in horror.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No.’ She shook her head desperately, and looked around her, but she was surrounded now with men, the castle guard, the constable of the castle and the armourer, ready at last to strike off her chains. This man was more careful. He examined her bruised wrists with a frown and a professional shake of the head, then with a practised stroke of mallet and chisel he had cut off the manacles. Isobel rubbed her wrists and straightened her shoulders. With a desperate attempt to cling to her pride she smiled. ‘So special a little house! And just for me?’

‘Just for you, my lady.’ He didn’t hurry her. They all stood, patiently waiting.

‘And with such a commanding view.’

She wanted to stretch; to hold out her arms to the sun. There in the cage it was shadowy, dappled with rays of light, sliced by the shadows of the bars lying across the floor.

In the distance from the wall walk she could see the brilliant blue line on the horizon which was the sea.

The men were growing impatient. She saw the governor shift his weight from one foot to the other. The sun shone on the mail at his throat and on his shoulders, blinding her. She raised her hand to her eyes.

Behind her one of the guards moved impatiently. His sword rasped against the flints of the wall.

Isobel swallowed. She would not let them push her in. She must keep her pride at all costs. She stepped towards the parapet. ‘I trust it is securely fastened,’ she managed to say. ‘I’d hate to fall so far.’

‘Never fear, my lady. That is built to last a lifetime,’ the governor replied grimly. He offered her his hand. Isobel felt herself grow cold. She had begun to shake all over. She took his hand, hoping he wouldn’t notice how her own trembled, and stepped up towards the parapet, then crouching to fit through the small latticed door she climbed inside. The door swung shut behind her and she saw the key turn in the lock. The governor withdrew it. For a moment he stood looking at her unsmiling, then he turned away. He had gone several steps, followed by all but two guards who remained at attention on the wall, when he turned. ‘I forgot to tell you, madam. Lest you get bored in your new abode his grace the King has arranged some entertainment for you tomorrow.’ He gestured towards the open ground below the castle wall, then he left her.

Isobel looked round in growing panic. The cage was some six feet long, and about five feet deep, securely bolted into the crenellations of the wall. Beneath her feet, under the oak floor boards there was a dizzying drop: the height of the tower to the ground beneath. Above her head they had half roofed the cage with heather to give a meagre shelter from the sun and rain. She tried cautiously to stand up and found that she couldn’t without crouching.

There was a shout below. She looked down. Two boys had stationed themselves in the scrub beneath the wall. One put his fingers to his mouth and whistled, then he stood and groped around his feet. In another moment a stone whistled through the air. It struck the heather roof of the cage and fell harmlessly back to the ground; a second followed it. It fell into the cage and skittered across the floor to Isobel’s feet.

‘Mother of God!’ She moved as far back as she could, but still they could see her. Still they could watch her fear.

The boys shouted at someone in the distance and she saw two other figures heading across the green from the town. Behind them two women, alerted by the noise and curious to see what it was that had appeared on the castle walls, made their way towards her too. Isobel watched in terror. There was nowhere to hide save the privy. Desperately she crept behind the small wooden partition and pressed herself flat against the castle wall.

Beneath the cage the crowd grew all afternoon. She could hear the shouts and cat calls, see the hail of missiles which from time to time rained down between the bars. Twice she crept out from her tiny refuge and each time she was greeted by a chorus of yells as she knelt on the cage floor, blinking in the afternoon sunlight.

All afternoon they stayed amusing themselves at her expense. The crowd sometimes grew and sometimes thinned, but always they were there, the people of Berwick, taunting and tormenting her.

Somehow Isobel held back her tears. She mustn’t give way. She must not give them the pleasure of seeing her suffering.

Slowly the sun went down in a blaze of red and gold and the shadow of the castle below the cage lengthened across the ground. The evening grew chill. One by one the people below began to leave, making their way back to their homes and firesides. By the time it was completely dark the meadow below was deserted.

Isobel was shivering violently. The wind had risen, whistling around the ramparts and through the bars. She felt her way back to the back of the cage and peered between the crenellations, through the bars of the door towards the wall walk. The guards had vanished in the darkness. The castle was silent.

She could hear her teeth chattering violently now. Behind her and below her, all around there was nothing but a void of blackness. She peered out at it, trying to force her eyes to pierce the night, but she could see nothing and for the first time in her life she was afraid of the dark. Desperately she tried to huddle out of the wind, clutching her ragged gown and kirtle around her. Beneath her shift her legs and feet were bare.

Then someone came. A woman, tall and slim and beautifully dressed, swathed in warm furs, with a page behind her carrying a flare, a woman who in another life might have been Isobel’s friend, her equal. Her arms were full of rugs. She beckoned one of the guards forward out of the darkness into the crazy tossing light of the flare. ‘Open the cage and give her these.’

The guard did as he was bid. In the wildly leaping shadows he fitted a key into the lock and pulled open the barred door. The bundle that was thrust through to Isobel contained two blankets and a fur-lined cloak. Isobel clutched them gratefully in the flickering light, terrified that the wind might tear them from her grasp and snatch them away through the bars into the great black darkness behind her. The door was slammed shut and relocked, then the woman stepped closer and stared in at her. She had a haughty, stern face which showed very little compassion. Merely practicality. If the prisoner froze to death on the first night of her exhibition the lesson to the people of Scotland would be lost and her punishment cut far shorter than King Edward intended.

She studied Isobel’s white face in the leaping torchlight and for a moment her hostility wavered. ‘I will have some food brought for you,’ she said, the wind whipping the words from her lips, ‘and tomorrow I will see you get some warmer clothing.’

Then she was gone and Isobel was left alone once more.

With shaking hands she fastened the cloak around her and wrapped herself in the rugs. They were warm and comforting against the wind.

Some time later the flare appeared again upon the wall. A servant brought her a bowl of onion stew and a pasty; there was a jug of wine and, best of all, a lantern. She stood the lantern in the shelter of the privy wall, terrified that it would blow out. Behind the panels of polished horn a small tallow candle was burning rapidly lower in a pool of smelly grease, but it lasted long enough for her to see what she was eating. She drank the rapidly cooling stew and ate the pasty ravenously; then as the candle died, she sat with her back to the castle wall, cocooned in rugs, the jug of wine inside them with her, drinking from it from time to time, and staring out into the black windy night with its scattering of stars. By the time she fell into a restless sleep the jug was empty.